


Me, Myself and I

by not_whelmed_yet



Series: Doubly Blessed and Doubly Cursed [4]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Bittersweet, Feelings, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Talking To Dead People, Wakes & Funerals, sometimes you are given more than you deserve, they don't talk back, they're dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 12:06:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11357169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_whelmed_yet/pseuds/not_whelmed_yet
Summary: This is a story that takes place in the same continuity as Seeing Double. However, all youneedto know is that both ships' Chromedomes survived, Rewind went through some shit and is now processing it. Here, he takes the time to talk to someone no longer around to hear him - Rewind 1.0.If you're reading SD, takes place after chapter 4.





	Me, Myself and I

**Author's Note:**

> Wow this title is really uncreative, but I wanted to keep the three word trend of the other shorts. Sorry this is late, I've been on a no-computer roadtrip the past week.

It was an innocuous looking area. An unused docking bay, an airlock in the bottom level of the ship. There wasn't a lot of foot traffic leading down to it, but it thinned out to nothing before he got there. He'd had to ask his Chromedome about the location, unwilling to open that wound again with the other. Chromedome hadn't known, but he'd asked Tailgate, who'd asked Cyclonus, who either had known or made inquiries without them hearing about it. In any case, the next day he found himself in front of the airlock. He'd brought a box. He'd open it eventually but, for now, he just used it as a place to sit.

What would it have been like to die here? It felt so prosaic. The same as any other corridor on the ship. He knew that the other Rewind hadn't actually died on the ship, but this was as close as he could get. He'd missed the funeral by months.

"Hey Rewind," he said. His voice reverberated strangely in the empty hallway.

"I know you're dead," he said. "So I know you can't hear me. But there are some things I needed to tell you, and this is the best I can do." He leaned over and fished out a vial from the box. He didn't have an easy-access port on one of his arms, so he'd filled it in advance. "I owe you so much and I can never repay that debt. So this offering is for you." He'd kept the vial small - his personal stores had never been large and were much diminished these days. He set it down on the floor in front of the airlock. It looked lonely there, all by itself.

He stood up and opened the box. Inside were the offerings he'd found at his berthside when he'd awoken. They weren't his, not really. They'd belonged to his other, been given to him over the course of his adventures on the Lost Light. Apparently someone had seen fit to move them from the boxes that held his possessions to the Medbay, where nobody had thought to tell him for days they were offerings for a ghost. "These are yours too," he said to fill the silence. "You were loved, I think. I know. The ship misses you."

He laid them out in a line a little behind his offering. The line stretched from one side of the airlock door to the other, vials standing shoulder to shoulder in a gently glowing honor guard. He shuffled back to his seat again.

"So. This is awkward. But I wish...I wish you could be here and tell me what to do. I guess I'll have to make it up as I go along, same way we always have." He'd been so young and so unformed and dependent when he'd fallen for Dominus. So lost and lonely and still so young when he'd realized he'd fallen for Chromedome. He'd never considered not taking whatever was offered him.

"Thank you. Thank you for everything. Thank you for keeping him safe, for keeping the ship safe, for keeping him _yours_ even after death. He didn't do it, can you believe it? He's still yours. And I don't want to be the one who takes that away from you."

"But I know you wouldn't want him to be alone. And he won't be. He won't ever be alone, because I'm going to be there for him; for you. For us. And we'll see what happens next, but I won't ever act like I'm you."

He let those echoes fade into the metallic still of the hallway. "I'm sorry you died and I'm sorry you suffered so much. I'll keep him safe for you and I'll do everything I can to make sure you aren't forgotten."

It would be so easy to not correct them. To slide into that empty space and fill in the gaps his ghost had left. To let them forget he was foreign and frightening and strange and instead let them pretend he was their friend bravely returned from death. It would be so easy to not feel alone and lost and crumbling at the edges. But the price would be too high.

He turned off his chronometer, because he wasn't going back until it felt right, whatever the time. His display still startled him sometimes, all the readouts he'd been deprived of for those long months. He had seen a thousand funerals, heard a thousand rites in his database. He had heard the threnodies of old and the blunt verses for front line casualties. He had it all and he had no words. He replayed some of that old footage internally, trying to linger in the sadness out of respect.

 

* * *

 

"There you are!" He jerked back to wakefulness, trying to online his chronometer and back out of that data tree all at the same time. He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there, but his hip joints ached, the way they did more and more these days. That was Tailgate calling him, he realized. He hadn't spoken to Tailgate yet. He knew, through Chromedome, that he'd been friends with the other Rewind.

And there he was, trundling down the corridor, arms crossed. "I found him, guys. Airlock 7C, down past the engine room," he said, presumably into his comm. He slowed once he saw the line of offerings, drifting to a stop a few feet back. "Hey, Rewind, you had everybody worried. We've been looking for you, your Chromedomes were frantic."

"I didn't, that didn't occur to me," he said, startled. He'd only been gone a few cycles. Everyone had seemed quite engaged in their own pursuits when he'd headed off. He had his own room anyway. Were people checking on his room every few cycles? "I needed to...to do something," he finished lamely, not sure how to explain _what_ he was doing to Tailgate.

Tailgate surveyed the scene and plonked himself down beside Rewind. "He was one of the first bots I met after waking up. Besides Swerve and Ratchet, I mean. I avoided him a lot at first, because I was lying about so much of my history and he kept trying to pin me down for interviews. I still feel guilty about that. I'd said I was a member of the Primal Vanguard and he was forever trying to get me to answer questions."

"There's so much we still don't know about it," Rewind said automatically. "My early database footage is composed of whatever could be recovered from libraries and archives after the war had started. Before we lost them to the war as well."

"Yeah, I remember him telling me that. If you ever wanted to get some information on the daily lives of the waste disposal class, let me know."

"Rewind!" Chromedome said. It was _his_ Chromedome, he realized before he turned. He hadn't noticed till just then, but their vocalizers were tuned to a different pitch, repaired from different battle damage. It was subtle - he doubted anyone who hadn't made an art of listening for the differences in transformation sequences to identify individuals would pick up on it. Chromedome was followed by his double and then, a few kliks later, by the ragtag group of Swerve, Whirl, Cyclonus, Skids and Rung, who'd apparently all been enlisted in the search. "What were you doing?"

Rewind wasn't sure what to say, everyone staring at him and the offerings. He hadn't even met all of these mechs yet, not their counterparts on this ship.

"We're having a wake," Tailgate said. "Unless you'd rather do this alone? I don't want to intrude."

"A wake?" Swerve said. "For who?"

"For the other Rewind," Rung said primly. "Do you want us here, Rewind? I fear we've stumbled onto something private."

"I...yes. If you want to, I mean. We could have a...wake."

"Not without the booze, we can't," Swerve said. "You all cue up the storytelling, I'll be back with supplies. I'll bring the Ten along to help carry."

Everyone lingered awkwardly for a moment as Swerve bustled out. Whirl was the first one to sit down. "Nobody? Everybody's so stiff, haven't you been to a good wake before? This is why you're supposed to get drunk first. So, the little guy. Has anyone told you about the time he helped Drift convince Rodimus the planet we were passing was populated with sentient plant people? They had him going for, like, six cycles. He nearly launched an away mission to make 'first contact'. Best fun you can have without shooting someone."

They all sat down and people started peppering Whirl's story with little details, before Rung started up on his own story about Rewind coming by to help organize his model collection after his room was defaced during the sparkeater attack. By the time he was done, Swerve was back and happily launching into a story about the other Rewind holding a storytelling session to try and 'fix Rung's brain'. It seemed near everyone had been there, because everyone began chiming in details as they poured out Engex and distributed straws. It took him a moment, but it was a snap realization that they were all connections in a sociotemporal hotspot - he'd never noticed that one before. Whirl really was the connecting thread there.

 _Hey, Rewind, I think_ _they remember you,_ he thought to himself. _And I'm going to make sure they never forget. You may be faded, but not from their memories. Never from their memories._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm over on tumblr at [ notwhelmedyet](http://notwhelmedyet.tumblr.com/), having mtmte feelings and very slowly rereading. I am overjoyed by any and all comments (yep, incoherent keyboard smashing included). If you have critical comments/corrections, send 'em my way, I want this story to be the best it can be.


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